Although I began using Photoshop in 2005, the Adobe Photoshop course (using Creative Suite 6) enhanced and built on this previous experience. Teaching non-destructive ways of editing such as layer masks, clipping masks as well as structuring in anchor points and other tools. Photoshop composites, retouching very old photographs, designing and applying advertisements, movie posters, drawing over existing photographs, and many other things were covered in this course. More information on Adobe Photoshop (now marketted as "Creative Cloud").

Foundations Of Web Development introduced design concepts, the foundation and purpose of having best practices, the purpose of templating, communicating with clients. This course also introduced wireframing, sitemapping, and other beginning processes. ODesk's Web Development 101 explains deeper.

The HTML introduced markup language with teaching HTML5 structuring. This introduced how to start a document, different levels of tags, how to create forms, tables, and other object structures. Towards the end of this course, an introduction of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) was introduced. Standards for both HTML and CSS are governed by the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C.

General Psychology taught all beginning areas of psychology including the different fields of psychology, an introduction to developmental psychology, perception, memory, consciousness, biology, substances, as well as other areas and topics.

College Writing was a college course based on writing longer papers, the different types and purposes of papers and long essays.

From the old Web Development AAS program, Adobe Dreamweaver taught ways to utilize powerful features in Adobe's IDE. This tool gave the opportunity to work with JavaScript some, by use of wizards and builders, before having personal experience with the language. The course also utilized CSS and HTML as sites were built for topics ranging from a restaurant menu site to a local sports team. An overview of Dreamweaver and what it does can be found from Adobe.

Using LEGO's Minstorms NXT robot and software, Hands-On Programming not only introduced programming logic, concepts, structures (such as loops), but also the world of robotics. While building and modifying (physically) the robot itself, we were able to program the NXT robot to follow courses and perform certain tasks such as turn 180 degrees when touching a wall. More information can be found on LEGO Mindstorm's "Learn To Program" page.

Although Flash usage is currently on a declining trend lately, the Adobe Flash (using Flash Professional CS6) course was beneficial. As it teaches media animation, with help from the software and ActionScript programming, it also teaches on keyframes, mouse events, how to loop animations, and beyond. Among assignments was a gopher race game, "click and play" video windows, and more.

Where HTML is the structure of a webpage, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the style. This course taught CSS3 styling language including selectors, classes, IDs, various properties, keyframe animations, and many other styling techniques. CSS Zen Garden has a great website showing the powerful things CSS can do.

My first class from the Computer Programming AAS was Introduction to Programming and Scripting which taught the server-side, object-oriented language of Python. This course taught writing Python for software, not the Web specifically, in form of designing software to calculate payroll, accepting and processing user input, and so on. It started by explaining binary before moving into various programming repetition structures, decision making structures, how to read and process files, and so on. Python.org has a great About Python page.

JavaScript, not related to Java, introduced web scripting and programming in form of working with various programming structures, case decisions, and introduced JavaScript libraries and frameworks. This course also taught about non-intrusive, best practices while programming/scripting in JavaScript. Programs were usually written as "event based", such as being triggered by a mouse click. JavaScript's most popular library, jQuery, was also introduced.

While the new Web Development AAS lists this class as User Interface Design, the course is essentially with the same concept. This course taught the fundamentals in optimizing the interface design for the user. Commonly conused with User Experience (UX) Design, UI focuses on the specific interaction with the user such as menus and other functionality such as to show the user what page they are on by using visual cues. The project I worked on was a fictional cyber-safety website.

A developmental course in Intro to Algebra.

PHP/MySQL introduced server-side functionality, PHP, and interacting with databases, via MySQL. PHP is an object-oriented language commonly used in modern web applications. PHP, a server-side language, was tought as well as lessons in algorithms, more specific pseudocode, and processing of files and variables outside of the PHP program itself. MySQL is a relational database system (RDBS) using SQL ("Structured Query Language"). This allows interaction examples such as storing, updating, removing, and adding records to a database.

Another course in the Computer Programming AAS, this was essentially an introduction to Database Management, using Microsoft Access to teach concepts and structure.

The purpose of both Web Applications courses is to allow students to become familiar and work with many different web technologies, often more than one within the same assignment. Web Applications I went deeper into JavaScript libraries/frameworks, such as jQuery and using Moustache.js for JavaScript templating. Knockout.js, as well as Angular.js, also being used for data binding concepts. Also taught in this course were techniques such as pagination, HTML email templates, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and more.

Content Management Systems (CMSs) are becoming more useful as they prove that certain web applications and websites can be developed more rapidly and also sometimes allowing the client to update the website themselves. The most popular, Wordpress is a powerful CMS that is downloaded and ran on a server. The software, at Wordpress.org and not to be confused with the online blog engine similar to Blogger or Tumblr at Wordpress.com. Other commonly used CMS software includes Joomla!, Drupal for blogs as well as company websites. CMS systems also extend to other areas such as the electronic commerce specific OpenCart. Most of these CMS systems use PHP for their server-side functionality. My music blog, MusicBytes, started its development as one of the projects in this course.

Electronic Commerce served as a collective course on business and marketing concepts, in standard business but especially in e-business and e-marketing. Working through case studies, assignments were to analyze business processes and best pratices and learn from past mistakes and successes of companies conducting any kind of business on the Internet. These types of business processes included online shopping, financial institutions, and beyond. Concepts such as stakeholders, business models, and other fundamentals were taught in this course as well as security practices.

Interpersonal Communications, fairly self-explanatory, taught techniques on how to create, continue and end more effective communications between any types of people in any type of relationship. Techniques within intercultural relationships were taught, as well as standard relationships and communicating with clients. This course also taught techniques to better read nonverbal behaviors, such as body language, and how to be a mindful listener.

The purpose of the series of Web Applications courses is to experiment and become familiar with many different web technologies, rather than a singular focus. Web Applications II introduced Git, UNIX/command line programming, and running a server with Node.js on a virtual machine. This course also began work with asynchronous programming using AJAX and JSON.

Search Engine Optimization (commonly referred to as SEO) includes technique to optimize websites for better rankings in major search enginges such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It also includes other search engines such as Russia's Yandex. This course also worked with Google's AdWords, SEO Book's Keyword Tool, optimizing Google+ Local and Twitter Search. The need for privacy policies, optimizing for multiple browsers, images for various image search engines, and Google's new Quality Score. Focus was not only on free SEO campaigns and organic search results but also "Pay-Per-Click" (PPC) and Google AdSense. Reporting, monitoring, and analyzing traffic with various tools including Google Analytics and Bing's SEO Analyzer Tool were also focused on.

Web Projects covered the Interactive Project Management. Covering topics from different team members and their roles to development stages and processes as well as recommended types of documents to keep projects organized and efficient. Also covered were how to present deliverables to and communicate with the client. This course also covered the differences between Waterfall and Agile project management.

Professional and Technical Writing demonstrated proper techniques for reader centered writing of resumes, memorandums, reports, proposals, and group brochure project. Techniques included keeping the reader in focus on what to include, or not include, in particular documents.

Throughout the Web Development AAS program, ongoing work on a portfolio has been part of the progression. Web Portfolio prepares students for graduation by allowing studying of actual profile designs and modifications. Also part of the course are topics that prepare for the work environment and career environment for Web Developers.

Where User Interface Design mainly focused on interaction, User Experience Design focused and instructed on everything that results on impact of how the user feels about the experience. Techniques include making things simpler, more efficient, design processes in everything as a whole. User Experience Design not only has roots in technology but also in psychology, sociology, and other liberal areas of expertise.

This course is an introduction to the topic of Ethics. It will examine how to make ethical decisions and understand ethical issues such as racism and censorship.

From MSCTC: "This course explores how data is gathered and analyzed and how it can be applied to information technology solutions to maximize the benefits of data analysis, including increases in the efficiency and productivity of information systems. Students will explore the social, ethical and personal implications of implementing information technologies and how information processes can impact business on a local and global level."

From Southeast Technical College: This course introduces Microsoft Visual Basic .Net and .Net framework programming basics. Includes: form layout, event-driven Windows programming concepts, variables/data types, objects and properties, user-define sub-procedures, and more.

From Southeast Technical College: This course uses Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, HTML5 Canvases, and other interfaces to create graphic animation. The course also includes vector graphics, transformations, triggers, and user interaction.

From Southeast Technical College: Common HTML/CSS web design and formatting using Microsoft Expression Web software.

From Southeast Technical College: The course will focus on fundamental design concepts and historical design styles relating to text and image interaction. Students will develop various types of graphic designs to include typography, color, illustration, symbols, and photography using Adobe InDesign and Photoshop.

From Southeast Technical College: This course will explore the history of TCP/IP. Students will learn the components and functionality of TCP/IP by studying the OSI Model, the TCP/IP stack model and its role in communicating across a network. The student will become familiar with basic and advanced IP addressing, as well as TCP/IP routing. Additional emphasis will be placed on the utilization of TCP/IP tools (TFTP, Ping, Telnet, etc.) Students will be required to calculate IP subnetting for various network scenarios.